old photos. somewhere. [travels]

some place i wandered past at some point in my life. i do not remember this place but i am sure i enjoyed the way the plants grow on top of these old walls because even though i have changed a whole lot since that picture was taken i still appreciate the things i have always appreciated.

ulla hahn. verbesserte auflage & eurydikes lied. [poems]

if i had found the poem on the left somewhere in the depth of the world wide web and didn't have to go to the library i'd never know about the poem on the right. however, i do know now. complete circle.






Hahn, Ulla. Gesammelte Gedichte. München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2013.

 

 

 

 

not yet a breach but an expansion. [memories]

like gold to ayery thinnesse beate

herta müller. herztier II. [invented worlds]

"Auch in der Stadt standen Maulbeerbäume. Aber nicht auf den Strassen draussen. Sie standen in den Innenhöfen. Und nicht in vielen. Nur in den Höfen alter Leute standen sie. Und unter den Bäumen stand ein Zimmerstuhl. Sein Sitz war gepolstert und aus Samt. Aber der Samt war fleckig und zerrissen. Und das Loch war von unten zugestopft mit einem Bündel Heu. Das Heu war vom Sitzen zusammengepresst. Unter dem Sitz hing es heraus wie ein Zopf. Wenn man bis zu dem ausgemusterten Zimmerstuhl ging, sah man dem Zopf noch die einzelnen Halme an. Und dass sie einmal grün waren.
In den Höfen mit Maulbeerbäumen fiel der Schatten wie Ruhe auf ein altes Gesicht, das auf dem Stuhl sass. Wie Ruhe, weil ich für mich selber unerwartet in diese Höfe ging und nur selten wiederkam. In dieser Seltenheit zeigte sich ein Lichtfaden, der schnurgerade aus der Baumspitze in das alte Gesicht fiel, eine entfernte Gegend. Ich sah an diesem Faden hinunter und hinauf. Mich fröstelte am Rücken, weil diese Ruhe nicht aus den Maulbeerästen kam, sondern aus der Einsamkeit der Augen im Gesicht. Ich wollte nicht, dass mich in diesen Höfen jemand sieht. Dass mich jemand fragt, was ich hier tu. Ich tat nicht mehr als das, was ich sah. Ich sah die Maulbeerbäume lange an. Und dann, bevor ich wieder ging, noch einmal das Gesicht, das auf dem Stuhl sass. In dem Gesicht war eine Gegend. Ich sah einen jungen Mann oder eine junge Frau diese Gegend verlassen und einen Sack mit einem Maulbeerbaum hinaustragen. Ich sah die vielen mitgebrachten Maulbeerbäume in den Höfen der Stadt. [...] 
Was man aus der Gegend hinausträgt, trägt man hinein in sein Gesicht."

Müller, Herta. Herztier. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007.

fink. looking too closely. [songs]

colours. [good things]

a gift i received. [memories]

four and a half years ago.

to kill a king. wolves. [songs]

i completely fell in love with this video. there is a forest rising from the pages of an old book with a wolf peeking out from behind the paper trees! need i say more? and one of the old books in it is entiteled "fifty strangest stories ever told"... the entire video is more than perfect and i could probably watch it a million times if i didn't have to study now. oh uni, keeping me from doing the important things in live. right?

liächtblick. [travels]

bark shedding tree. lighthouse park. [travels]

faerie forest. [good things]

aabig-sunne III. [good things]

 evening sun. again.

coining words. [good things]

when i was reading in azar nafisi's reading lolita in tehran and stumbled over the quote i posted last week about how she and her students explained to each other what the word upsilamba meant to them i strongly felt the urge to join in - i love inventing stuff and making stuff up in my mind. however, taking it as a noun is too narrow and to confined for me so i will just turn it into an adjective. 
so here goes:
an upsilambian feeling is that moment when your heart seems to burst out of mere joy, gladness and contentment when suddenly you feel that there is so much of said feeling inside you that you have to share it with everyone around you. you feel your upsilambianness radiate to those who are around you.
when lying in the grass, looking up to the trees and the deep blue sky, with the sun making its way through the branches now and then, it is difficult not to experience an upsilambian moment.

john keats. on first looking into chapman's homer. [poems]

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
     And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
     Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of wide expanse had I been told
     That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
     Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: 
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
     When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with his eagle eyes
     He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men 
Look'd at each other with wild surmise -
     Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Keats, John. "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer". The Norton Anthology of Poetry. 5th ed. Eds. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy. New York, London : W.W. Norton & Company, 2005.

alt-j. ms. [songs]

this song reminds me so much of all those evenings my friend and i spent crawled up next to a little fire, somewhere close to the ocean. somehow, there was always a bit of sand which made its way into our sleeping bags, no matter how hard we tried to keep it from happening.

hiking and the magical tree. [travels]

two and a half years ago, my friend jess and i were hiking a trail along the coast near ucluelet and when we came across this tree we sat down a couple of feet away from it, enjoyed the sunlight that made its way through the branches and talked for quite a while. we talked about our dreams, our desire to break out of the confined space of everyday life, our shared dislike of the conventions that determine how we are supposed to live our lives and our (unconventional) hopes for the future. i like to think that this tree, magical, as it seemed to us somehow, is the keeper of the wishes it heard that day and that it will magically open up possibilities and new paths that we do not see yet but exist already.